The Breakup Artist Page 3

  “It’s still not good to mix business and pleasure,” I said. “Do you think she’d be happy if she found out you were involved in her breakup?”

  “Whatever. The point is she deserves better than that jerk.”

  I looked at the picture of Kylie. The shot that captured the exact moment she’d realized that everything she suspected after that text was true. Maybe that was the moment he’d admitted to her that he really was cheating on her.

  I suppose it was possible for someone to rationalize away some pictures and naughty texts. After all, it could be the work of some nefarious hacker who was deliberately trying to break them up.

  Which was ridiculous and far-fetched, right?

  But there was no denying it if Thomas admitted to everything. No, there was no coming back from that.

  I looked at Craig. Maybe there was something to his idle speculation. He was a good looking guy. He had that shy geeky heartthrob thing going for him, and that was the in thing these days. Geek was chic. Otherwise why were people making all those comic book movies?

  “If you think she deserves better then why don’t you ask her out?”

  Craig snorted and there was a gleam in his eye. As though he thought I was making fun of him or something. Which I suppose was the natural reaction of the shy slightly geeky guy who hadn’t quite realized yet that he’d grown into heartthrob status.

  “Not funny,” he said.

  “Who said I was joking?” I asked. “You have a lot to offer a girl. You’re cute. Smart. I know you know how to treat a girl right because I remember how good you were with Tiffany.”

  Craig grimaced. I probably shouldn’t have reminded him of Tiffany, but what can you do? That was one messy breakup that happened without any interference from yours truly.

  “Yeah, she liked me so much that she decided to get with another guy,” Craig said. “I never did find out who that bastard was. God I’d like to get back at him and…”

  He rambled on while I stared at him. Finally when he didn’t seem to be getting the picture I cleared my throat. He looked up. Seemed to finally notice that there was something significant about the look I was giving him. It was one of those unspoken looks that said “hey asshole! Pay attention!”

  He looked down at the phone. Back to me. My face split in a huge grin. His eyes went wide and he grinned right back at me.

  “No way,” he said. “Seriously? Thomas?”

  “None other than,” I said.

  “Why didn’t you say anything before?” he asked.

  “I only found out when I was doing research for this job,” I said. “If it makes you feel any better he totally dropped her a week after she decided to break up with you.”

  “That doesn’t make me feel better,” he said. “She might’ve been a jerk, but she doesn’t deserve that.”

  I reached out and put a hand on his. “See? This is why a girl like Kylie deserves a guy like you. She’s so sweet and innocent and trusting. She deserves a guy who will live up to that.”

  “So where were all these superlatives when you were thinking about dating me?” he asked.

  I stuck my tongue out. “Come on Craig. You know I was never thinking about dating you.”

  He clutched a hand over his heart as though I’d just stuck a knife in there. Or maybe as though I’d just done the Temple of Doom routine and reached in and yanked out his still beating heart.

  Talk about gross. I can see why they created the PG-13 rating for that movie.

  “You know it never would’ve worked with us,” I said.

  I told myself I was never attracted to Craig because he was my neighbor and he was like a brother, but I think we all know the real reason I decided to avoid opening that particular can of worms.

  Hindsight is 20/20, and all that. It’s probably a good thing for him that he never had to deal with the trauma of finding out the girl he was dating, the storybook childhood sweethearts narrative I’m sure he’d constructed in his head back in middle school when he went for it and we had to have a long talk that resulted in us not talking to each other for half a year, was a lie because he’d been dating a girl who was into girls.

  “Come on Craig. I’ve made it clear things aren’t going to work between us, but that doesn’t mean they wouldn’t work with you and Kylie.”

  I looked down to the food court again. Mall security was escorting Thomas away, and Kylie was down there crying. Like we’re talking some serious ugly crying with makeup running and everything.

  Again I felt a pang of guilt. I knew that on some level I’d caused that, even if I had only caused it by unearthing details that Thomas probably would’ve rather not had shared with the world.

  But at the same time I couldn’t feel completely terrible about this. After all, those details had been there for me to unearth and share with the world. Which meant they had problems that went deep.

  I hadn’t created the dirty laundry. I just aired it a little. It wasn’t my problem if it turns out their relationship couldn’t handle the smell.

  I’m going to get into defensive mode here, so haters get ready to hate. But that’s the thing about doing what I do. I never broke up a perfectly happy couple. It was sort of a rule I made for myself when I started this job.

  And the one time that caused this all to blow up? The breakup everyone blames me for? Totally didn’t do it.

  No, you bet your ass I made sure there were good reasons for breaking a couple up before I went to work. Reasons that would have come out eventually. I just hastened the process along and took a little money for my trouble.

  If they were going to break up eventually why not get a little bit of profit on the inevitable fallout?

  Still, looking down at Kylie that day and thinking about the look on her face as she realized she’d been betrayed by the man she thought she loved was enough to make me think about the ethics of what I did.

  For like half a second.

  “Okay. Enough of that,” I said. “Whip out your phone so I can transfer the usual 30%.”

  Craig smiled, pulled out his phone, and saluted with it.

  “You’ve got it boss.”

  4

  Movie Date

  Ashley Timmons says

  Yes, you’re all very funny. The breakup artist does have a soul. Yes I was sad when I looked down at Kylie being upset about her breakup.

  But no, you haters can try all you want, but being sad about Kylie being sad about her breakup wasn’t enough to make me rethink my job.

  Bad things happen all the time in this world. If you had a boyfriend or girlfriend and they were cheating on you would you want to know they were cheating on you? Or would you want to go your entire relationship, it’s probably not going to last long unless you’re a complete doormat, being completely oblivious to what they were doing?

  Would you rather be a laughingstock? Have everybody talk behind your back? Talk about what a jerk you were because somehow you’re the jerk even though your jerk of a boyfriend or girlfriend is the one doing the cheating?

  Yeah, I bet when you put yourself in those shoes you suddenly understand why it might be a good idea to go ahead and break someone up. I don’t understand why this is so difficult for so many people to understand.

  That relationship was over. Kylie will tell you as much. I could tell you how much happier she is now, but people still seem to think I’m somehow the bad guy because I’m the person who gave a relationship that was hanging on the edge of the cliff a little push that sent it down to the rocks below.

  Yeah, no. That’s not how it works.

  And Thomas, you’ll be glad to know we’re moving on from you once and for all. You can’t use the comments on these posts to troll for girls who are interested in hopping on you anymore.

  By the way, girls? My research indicates that it’s totally small. Like minuscule. Like someone is either compensating for something or they used too many steroids to get that muscular body. Not to mention the only thing any girl w
ho’s been with Thomas has to say about his performance is how lousy it is.

  Do with that information what you will ladies. On to our story for the day.

  I sighed as I made my way through the mall. Usually I was excited after a job, but that excitement drained away as I moseyed over to the movie theater.

  Maybe it was because my parents told me stories about how they’d met in this movie theater. How they’d made out there, which was totally an inappropriate thing to tell your kids so if you ever grow up and have kids of your own spare them those details.

  It might seem cute to you, but it’s emotionally scarring for us.

  Anyways. The mall theater these days was nothing like what it’d been back when my parents were dating. The thing had been completely renovated with big fluffy seats that reclined when you pushed a button. They’d added all sorts of stuff to entice people to pay the ridiculous prices they charged for a movie.

  Of course they still hadn’t invented technology to keep assholes from talking or answering a text that was so world shatteringly important that it couldn’t wait until the end of the movie, so no amount of fancy new stadium seating could really improve the experience all that much.

  I looked around, expecting to see Steve waiting for me. I’d had plenty of time to get in a little bit of work at the mall before I met him for date night.

  Although it was really more of a date afternoon. That was the nice thing about the weekend. It didn’t matter what time you decided to do something as long as you had the time off.

  Besides, it’s not like I was going to find Thomas and Kylie hanging out in the food court on their own date afternoon on a weekday when they were supposed to be at school.

  Considering some of the things I’d learned about Thomas it was entirely possible I might find him with a girl from another school who was taking a “sick day,” but with Kylie? Not likely.

  I turned and looked at the posters for the movies on offer. A couple of romantic comedies. One horror movie that looked terrible, and not in the “so bad it’s good” way. There were a couple of action movies and one superhero movie because of course there had to be at least one superhero movie in the theaters at all times these days.

  I turned to the concession stand. There were a couple of workers there looking pretty bored. It was early enough in the afternoon that the matinee crowd looking for a deal was long gone, but the evening date night crowds hadn’t shown up yet.

  And as I got a good look at the workers I found myself drawn to one girl in particular. I wasn’t sure why I was drawn to her, but I couldn’t deny that my eyes kept wandering back to her.

  She had pretty green eyes and blonde hair pulled up in a ponytail. No doubt so she didn’t have to worry about getting her hair stuck in the popcorn machine or whatever other occupational hazards were a thing for people working at a movie theater.

  Phrases about rivers in Egypt are going to surely come to mind as you read this, but at that moment I couldn’t think of a single reason why I’d be drawn to that girl. Why I’d be more interested in her than, say, the guy standing behind the counter. He was a little older, probably in college, but cute in a dorky sort of way.

  But my eyes kept returning to that girl. She was leaning over the front counter, right over a glass display showing all the overpriced candy they had on offer, but there was something about her.

  Maybe it was because I was so focused on her, or maybe it was that I was looking for anything but my boyfriend, but I jumped and let out a little yelp when hands wrapped around me from behind.

  For a terrified moment I worried that someone was attacking me. Maybe it was Thomas. Maybe he’d somehow, impossibly, figured out exactly who’d ruined his afternoon and his chances of getting any tonight.

  No, revise that. I’d ruined his chances of getting any with Kylie. That wouldn’t stop him from getting with someone else, though. He had a contact list a mile long and he’d be blowing it up as soon as mall security deposited his ass on the other side of the front entrance.

  Then the arms around me started to get very familiar. In a way I was familiar with, even if it had me letting out a growl of frustration.

  I turned around and tried to break free of those arms, but Steve didn’t make any move to pull away. No, he doubled down and pulled me against him as he smiled down at me.

  I smiled right back at him, and wondered what was wrong with me that I was more annoyed than excited.

  Wasn’t a girl supposed to enjoy her boyfriend wrapping his arms around her? Wasn’t I supposed to be into him getting all up close and personal?

  I told myself I was annoyed because we were out in public. Yeah, that was it. It was a perfectly rational explanation.

  Only I knew, on some level, that I would’ve been just as annoyed with him if this happened in private.

  “Come on Steve,” I said. “People are watching.”

  For some reason my thoughts went to that girl at the concession stand. I imagined her eyes on us, and for some reason I didn’t like the idea of her watching me getting up close and personal with my boyfriend. Even if getting up close and personal with my boyfriend was only natural. Wasn’t that what girls were supposed to do with their boyfriends?

  But there was something about the thought of her watching us that made me blush and worry. I didn’t want her to see us and get the wrong idea.

  Even if I wondered what the hell that meant. How could my boyfriend hugging me be anything but the right idea?

  I pushed those thoughts away. Looked over to the concession stand where they totally weren’t paying attention to us. Though I thought I saw the girl glance over. A warmth ran through me that felt like the kind of thing I was supposed to feel when Steve got close.

  I tried not to think about what that might mean.

  “Come on Ashley,” Steve said. “The only people watching us are over at the concession stand, and I don’t think that cute blonde is going to be that upset. Although that guy is giving you the eye.”

  I smacked him on the chest. It was a light snack. Because for some reason I couldn’t bring myself to be all that upset at the idea of him thinking another girl was cute.

  Or maybe it was that I was upset, but it wasn’t for the right reasons. No, I was more annoyed at the thought of him checking out that girl in particular than I was at the general idea of him checking girls out which should have been enough to piss off any sane girlfriend.

  “It’s still not appropriate,” I said, finally managing to push him away.

  “Come on Ashley,” he said. “You don’t have to be like that.”

  I found myself thinking about relationships. Particularly relationships where people didn’t have the guts to pull the trigger and end them.

  This is where we’re going to get into one of those ultimate ironies of the ol’ breakup artist. I’m about to lay some truth on you that might come as a bit of a surprise.

  My parents didn’t have the guts to end their relationship, and I suppose there was something about the example they’d set for me that was creeping into my life now. Because while I was more than capable of ending other relationships that had obviously gone well past their expiration date, the sad irony was the great and powerful breakup artist couldn’t do the very same thing in her own life.

  I think even back then on some level I knew my relationship with Steve wasn’t long for the world, but I was too much of a chicken to do what needed to be done. To put our relationship out of its misery.

  And Steve, I know you’re probably reading this and we’ve been over this before, but I need to say it where the world can see. I was going through some confusing stuff when this all happened. I know that doesn’t make it hurt any less, but at the same time it’s just who I am. Who I was.

  No, the problem is I didn’t know who I was at the time, and can you really fault a girl for finding herself and realizing the relationship she was in wasn’t right for her? If anything the only thing I have to apologize for is that I was too chic
ken to end it sooner.

  And for that I really am sorry.

  So there you go. Finally some fuel for the fire. Some material for the haters, right from the breakup artist herself. You were looking for stuff you could use to flame me, and I just gave you one hell of a flamethrower. Have at it in the comments.

  But that’s neither here nor there. The point is I was at the movie theater, I’d seen a pretty girl who caught my attention for some reason, and I was stuck going on an afternoon date with a guy I was pretty sure I wasn’t all that into.

  “So do you want to get some candy or something?” Steve asked, sounding a lot less enthusiastic now than he had moments ago when he’d pretty much dry humped me in front of all the nice theater workers who didn’t need to see that sort of thing.

  Normally I wasn’t a huge fan of allowing the theater to price gouge me. I knew that was the way they stayed in business, well that and charging ridiculous prices for movies, but for some reason that day I felt like visiting the concession stand. That sounded a lot more enticing than the thought of going into a dark movie theater with Steve.

  So I smiled up at him. Wrapped my arm around his. Looked at that pretty girl again.

  “You know what. I think that sounds like a grand idea,” I said. Then I thought of all the money I’d just made. “And it’s on me. Whatever you want.”

  “Really?” he asked, his eyes going wide. “Awesome!”

  5

  Zero Dark Theater

  Ashley Timmons says

  Okay. I totally deserved everything I got in the comments on that last post. I freely admit that.

  I mean what else can I say? What I was doing to Steve was shitty. Of all the shitty things I’m going to admit to doing in this story that’s probably at the top of the list.

  I know there are still a few Thomas fan girls out there who are totally willing to fall on his sword to make me look like an idiot because you girls have no self-respect and think that’s going to get him to bang you or something, but whatever.